Ill governor backs down to Sci-linked CCHR

Anti-psychiatry exhibit OK'd ; Scientology-tied display revived

Chicago Tribune/December 9, 2003
By John Chase

After conferring with state lawyers, the Blagojevich
administration
reversed itself Monday and said it no longer thought a
controversial
Scientology-linked exhibit blasting psychiatry
promoted a religious
philosophy and would therefore allow the exhibit to be
displayed
next month in the Thompson Center.

The decision comes less than a week after the agency
that oversees
operations at the Thompson Center kicked the
"Destroying Lives:
Psychiatry Exposed" display out of the first-floor
atrium. Officials
with the Department of Central Management Services
said the exhibit
promoted the Church of Scientology, which in 1969
founded the
organization that set up the display, the Citizens
Commission
on Human Rights.

State rules forbid religious groups from renting
display space
in state buildings to promote their beliefs.

Officials with the national headquarters of the
Citizens Commission
appealed the decision. After reviewing the display, as
well as
the materials the organization handed out to the
public, Central
Management attorneys determined the exhibit did not
promote
Scientology.

Marla Filidei, international vice president of the
Citizens Commission,
said the state's flip-flop was a victory for 1st
Amendment rights.

"We were prepared to go as far as need be to ensure
that justice
was done in this case," she said. "The state was very
misguided
in its initial decision. The exhibit is what it
portrays itself
to be and nothing more than that."

The exhibit is expected to return to the Thompson
Center for
a week, beginning Jan. 5, Central Management
spokeswoman Pam
Davies said.

Less than 24 hours after the exhibit was erected last
week, Central
Management Director Michael Rumman ordered it removed.
The large,
museumlike exhibit attacked psychiatry as a wicked
profession
with links to Nazi Germany. It features blown-up
photographs
of what is alleged to be patients being abused,
including undergoing
electroshock treatment, and charged that psychiatrists
have frequently
abused their power and subjected patients to unsafe
experiments
or medical procedures.

The display made only scant reference to the group's
ties to
Scientology, considered a religion by its followers.
Critics
contend it is a cultlike organization.

While criticism of psychiatry is a critical aspect of
Scientology's
belief structure, the state agency's attorneys
concluded the
display did not have religious overtones.

The same display has been located outside the state
Capitol in
New Hampshire, inside Georgia's Capitol and in a state
office
building in New York, Filidei said.

Despite the about-face, Davies said she did not think
the state's
decision last week was hurried.

"We really don't think it was hasty, particularly
because within
hours after the exhibit went up we had an incident in
which security
had to be called," Davies said. She said someone last
week tried
to disassemble the display and throw away pamphlets
the group
was handing out.

Still, Davies said the state plans to change
procedures for future
applicants who wish to rent space in state buildings
by asking
them to disclose any connections to religious
organizations.
Had that requirement been in place, she said, the
Citizens Commission
exhibit would have been allowed but the state would
have known
about the group's ties to Scientology and been able to
study
the display before it was erected.

Although the state will allow the group to bring the
exhibit
back, it is requiring the organization to pay $1,650,
in addition
to rental space expenses, to cover the cost of having
a security
guard.

The state also maintains that when the Citizens
Commission first
sought to rent the atrium space, it did not fully
disclose its
affiliation to Scientology or fully describe the
nature of the
display. The state contends that the group described
the exhibition
as a "history of psychiatry" in its application.

Officials with the American Psychiatric Association
have said
the group's attacks on the profession are not based on
scientific
facts.

Filidei insisted her organization can document its
charges. "The
public has the right to see information that the
vested interests
in the mental health industry don't want them to see,"
she said.

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